Emil Lederer: Discussion Contribution on Coal Mining (1920)

This recorded commission speaking turn, published in volume II, pp. 495–496, examines whether the proposed organization of coal mining warrants the name “socialization.” Lederer’s intervention turns on the continuity of the private entrepreneur’s position, rather than on the merits of organizational reform alone.

Referring to an earlier contribution, Lederer states that he sees no change in the entrepreneur’s position relative to the existing syndicate. Measures within that arrangement can reduce production costs and increase the share of total production claimed by mine administrations, thereby raising profit. His objection concerns the economic relationships retained beneath the proposed institutional construction:

Also alle Begriffe, die wir in der Privatwirtschaft haben, werden übernommen, und zwar zugunsten der Privatwirtschaft, so lange man den Privatunternehmer als solchen bestehen läßt.

English translation: Thus all the concepts we have in the private economy are carried over, and indeed to the benefit of the private economy, as long as the private entrepreneur is retained as such.

The qualification is decisive: preserving the private entrepreneur also preserves the mechanisms through which organizational improvements benefit private enterprise. Lederer nevertheless explicitly says that this is no objection to the construction itself. These consequences necessarily follow from retaining the basic features of the existing private economy. He distinguishes a potentially workable arrangement from the claim made for it:

Nur würde ich der bescheidenen Meinung sein, daß wir das nicht unter der Flagge der Sozialisierung segeln lassen.

English translation: I would merely be of the modest opinion that we should not sail this under the flag of socialization.

The brief contribution thus moves from institutional continuity, through its implications for profit, to a challenge to political terminology. Its significance lies in refusing to equate reorganized coal production with socialization when the entrepreneur’s underlying economic position remains intact.